U.S. Millennials Fall Far Behind Educational Average

 

America’s educational system is failing millennials. Badly.

Granted, this age group is likely to be the most educated generation in American history, but according to a study by the Educational Testing Service, they rank among the bottom in the world for literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments (PS-TRE).

ETS dug into test results conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), singled out the cohort born after 1980, and broke them down by country. Here are the disturbing results:

  • Literacy: Out of 22 participating countries, U.S. millennials ranked third from the bottom, beating only Spain and Italy.
  • Numeracy: U.S. millennials ranked last, tied with Spain and Italy.
  • PS-TRE: U.S. millennials also ranked last, along with the Slovak Republic, Ireland, and Poland.

Not only that, when ETS singled out the top-performing millennials, U.S. students still ranked second to last. Even though a higher percentage of young adults are getting higher levels of education, the numeracy scores have dropped. America is handing out more and more diplomas while actual learning is dropping lower and lower.

Looking at this dismal state of affairs, many well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) critics will say, “A-ha! We need to increase school budgets to fix this mess.” That argument might be more compelling if it weren’t for another OECD study.

OECD-Chart

As the chart shows, the U.S. spends more on education per student than any other developed nation. In 2010, America spent over $11,000 per elementary student and over $12,000 per high schooler. Adding in college and post-secondary vocational training, the U.S. spent a whopping $15,171 on each student.

We’re spending more money on education, sending our kids to more classrooms, but we’re getting inferior results. Education needs to change structurally if we are to compete in the global economy.

That’s where school choice comes in. Instead of flooding resources into our broken system, we need to change the paradigm. Parents, not government bureaucrats, should have the freedom to choose the best education for a their child. We need to encourage healthy competition among schools and education styles so that all programs have an incentive to improve.

The one-size-fits-all education model obviously isn’t working for the U.S. It’s past time to allow students access to the education that works best for them, to provide incentives for them to achieve, and to motivate schools to improve.

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  1. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Obviously…the answer is…a lot more complicated.

    1) You’re confusing 2 things here: the cost chart you provide includes college education.

    2) The US college system is…absolutely…the top performer in the world. Hence, how can our “education system” be failing us, if it produces the best results in the world, where it matters?

    3) There’s about a million of these international tests, where the US ranks sometimes well, sometimes not so well. What does it mean? Probably, nothing…because average scores mean very little.

    4) The US has a far more diverse demographic makeup than any of these countries. So as with everything where averages are compared, you need to look at the…distribution. Statistically speaking, the US is, usually, not different from the average performance of OECD countries. Meaning, even if the…average score may be below, the distribution is wide enough that statistically it is not different.

    Here for example you have reading and math score performances of the US in the PISA test:

    Reading: 17th …but not statistically different from the OECD average.

    Science: 23rd…not statistically different from OECD average

    5) The demographic diversity plays a big role here. Many of the top performing “countries” on these lists aren’t even…countries. Shanghai, Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore, Lichtenstein…all outperform almost everyone else. But these are cities. Individual US cities may do much better than the US, too.

    Almost all of the countries outperforming the US or the OECD average are…tiny homogeneous populations. Finland, Ireland, Estonia, Switzerland etc etc. Again, it’s simple statistics…much larger and much more diverse countries will inevitably have lower averages.

    So what does all of this tell us? It tells us that the US is not really falling behind. The “countries” ahead of the US are almost entirely small homogeneous populations (often cities). With the exceptions of some clear outliers in performance like Korea or Japan.

    So these ranks mean nothing, because the average number means nothing. It’s the distribution of the scores that matter.

    • #1
  2. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    6) As for costs, the main driver in costs is simply…the growth rate in students enrollments.

    All the other countries on that list have declining or flat enrollment rates. Schools aren’t things that have “economies of scale”. So the more students, the more costs. The US is the only country on that list with growing rates.

    Also, a huge increase in the number of kids needing…special education.

    7) These tests are not given to random students in each country. Who do you think are the students taking the test in Shanghai? The average representative student in China? Or the average, rich kid in China? Who do you think is taking the test in Poland? The average Polish peasant school, or the elite students in Warsaw? So that’s another reason why these numbers are pretty meaningless.

    8)  Yes, US schools definitely don’t teach as much math as the comparable school in some other place. In Old Country they used to teach calculus in HS…in the US calculus is only taught to AP students.

    So what…is the question? Is Russia outperforming the US in any objective or subjective manner, in education or in any field…simply because the average Russian peasant learns calculus in HS, while only the elite US students do?

    Of course not.

    The US system is different in that it allows for greater choice…you can take calculus in HS, or you can take calculus in college, or you may not take calculus at all, ever. If you don’t intend to go work in a field which requires calculus, then it’s all wasted effort to teach you calculus.

    Meaning, its only those people who will actually utilize this knowledge who will get it. It makes no practical difference to teach it to people who won’t use it.

    Which is why there really isn’t any connection between these sort of indicators, and economic output, innovation, entrepreneurship, etc etc.

    • #2
  3. Black Prince Inactive
    Black Prince
    @BlackPrince

    AIG:2) The US college system is…absolutely…the top performer in the world. Hence, how can our “education system” be failing us, if it produces the best results in the world, where it matters?

    Because the top US colleges are really international colleges filled with talented international students—especially where it really matters in the areas of engineering, science and medicine.

    Skip to 9:45

    • #3
  4. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Black Prince:

    AIG:2) The US college system is…absolutely…the top performer in the world. Hence, how can our “education system” be failing us, if it produces the best results in the world, where it matters?

    Because the top US colleges are really international colleges filled with talented international students—especially where it really matters in the areas of engineering, science and medicine.

    And?

    If your arguments are that only…ethnic Scotts 6th generation Americans count as “Americans”, then yes you may have a point.

    Otherwise, there’s no point. The US is by definition a country which attracts people from all over the world, not just for education purposes, but for all purposes.

    The point of every higher education system anywhere is to attract the top talent, and keep it here. Which is what we do better than anyone else (that is, until certain “conservatives” get their way ;) )

    Of course, the interesting part is how there’s a bunch of “conservatives” here on Ricochet claiming that “intelligence doesn’t matter”, “education doesn’t matter”, “we don’t need college”, “we need to reduce college” etc etc. On the other hand, there’s another bunch of “conservatives” (sometimes the same ones as the previous bunch)…who decry how “bad our education system is”…and yet a third bunch who say “we don’t need no foreigners coming here and taking our jobs!”.

    Three contradictory positions. None grounded in any reality on what this country is, what matters for economic growth, what matters for being competitive…but purely based on political reasons.

    • #4
  5. Douglas Inactive
    Douglas
    @Douglas

    It has nothing to do with spending, and everything to do with our rotting culture. Majoring in *insert silly ethnic/sexual trend here* “studies”, avoiding math and engineering because it’s hard, and basically having a disdain for high culture pretty much guarantees the coming idiocracy. We’re just paying top dollar for it. It’s particularly bad in certain sectors. It seems like every white kid is majoring in English or communications (everyone wants to be a star, I guess), and in my area, most of the black kids in college are taking various sociology and black studies courses and hope for government jobs in “social work”. Meanwhile, the smartest kids in school… taking math and sciences are, you guessed it… Asian kids. And just to make you feel better… it’s only going to get worse with the next generation.

    • #5
  6. Black Prince Inactive
    Black Prince
    @BlackPrince

    AIG:

    Black Prince:

    AIG:2) The US college system is…absolutely…the top performer in the world. Hence, how can our “education system” be failing us, if it produces the best results in the world, where it matters?

    Because the top US colleges are really international colleges filled with talented international students—especially where it really matters in the areas of engineering, science and medicine.

    And?

    If your arguments are that only…ethnic Scotts 6th generation Americans count as “Americans”, then yes you may have a point.

    Otherwise, there’s no point. The US is by definition a country which attracts people from all over the world, not just for education purposes, but for all purposes.

    The point is that there may come a time when the US is no longer an attractive place for talented people to go to. Oh wait, it’s already happening.

    • #6
  7. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Douglas:It has nothing to do with spending, and everything to do with our rotting culture. Majoring in *insert silly ethnic/sexual trend here* “studies”, avoiding math and engineering because it’s hard, and basically having a disdain for high culture pretty much guarantees the coming idiocracy. We’re just paying top dollar for it. It’s particularly bad in certain sectors. It seems like every white kid is majoring in English or communications (everyone wants to be a star, I guess), and in my area, most of the black kids in college are taking various sociology and black studies courses and hope for government jobs in “social work”. Meanwhile, the smartest kids in school… taking math and sciences are, you guessed it… Asian kids. And just to make you feel better… it’s only going to get worse with the next generation.

    You have a good point on the disdain for “high culture”.

    But, that’s probably a much bigger problem for…conservatives…than others. The disdain for anything intellectual, is a major component of certain self-proclaimed “conservative” segments (of course, not all, and not even a majority…but a vocal enough majority in the “true conservative” camp)

    As for “ethnic studies” vs “engineering”, the number’s don’t support your claim, however. STEM accounts for about 50% of graduates from college. “Ethnic, cultural etc.” type of studies are less than 1%. So, they’re certainly not significant enough to be talking about.

    The real…alternative…is the “education” majors. Education, as a field of study, has exploded and usually attracts the bottom performers. Of course, most of them are women, and are driven by the increased enrollment of women in college, who are much less likely to go to STEM fields, but into “soft” fields like education.

    • #7
  8. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Black Prince:

    The point is that there may come a time when the US is no longer an attractive place for talented people to go to. Oh wait, it’s already happening.

    1) Yeah, no it hasn’t happened.

    2) Yeah, there may came such a time. If we follow the prescriptions of certain “conservative” politicians and policy wonks. So…don’t.

    So I’m a foreign born individual. Came to the US, graduated 7th in my class in HS (the entirety of the top 20 in my class were foreign born students…3 of the people ahead of me from the same Old Country as me, but then again, this was NYC, so 80% of the HS was foreign born students).

    Do I “count” as American, or do I get disregarded?

    If you disregard me, that’s ok. But that’s missing the point that this has always been the…case…of the US. That’s been the whole point of the US. So why do people come here in the first place, then?

    If not for the fact that we offer the best…system…where top performers can achieve their full potential?

    Which brings me back to my original point. Is this about teaching useless calculus to every student, regardless of whether they are ever going to need it, or want it. Or is it about providing the best ability to self-select?

    • #8
  9. TKC1101 Member
    TKC1101
    @

    The Millennials are bored in school. We create a world awash in information, media created by geniuses who could sell snow the Eskimos, entertainment at your beck and call and we then sit them in a construct used to educate middle ages farmhands for the factory work of the industrial revolution and expect performance?

    We waste incredible amounts of our children’s time with an educational system designed in the early 18th century which now provides incredible easy living to unionized teachers and administrators , including unfundable pensions.

    This is the country who does great software, the worlds best advertising and pioneers video game technology and we can’t replace the educational process with something at one   hundredth the cost and ten times the impact?

    School should take half the time it used to at a minimum. Todays education does nothing but employ public sector workers and bore the daylights out of smart, average and dumb kids alike. Let kids who can master the skills get out of school and get jobs, or horrors, have fun.

    Imagine what parents would pay to the creators of HALO, or Assassins Creed for a game that taught kids to read or advanced math?  Something they would dig into with the same fervish attention they apply to getting to the next level in any video game.

    • #9
  10. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    TKC1101:School should take half the time it used to at a minimum.

    But, there’s a deeper issue here.

    If you wanted to teach the same level of “stuff” to students as you did 50 years ago, then yes, it should…and probably does…take half the time.

    But as with everything, the “cheaper” it gets, the more you’re going to get.

    And that’s what the numbers show. US students today outperform their previous generations. And they learn a lot more than the previous generations.

    But this isn’t a comparison of current US students with previous US students. This is a comparison across groups. Of course, some things just can’t be “scaled” or made easier through technology. Basic education is one of those fields. You still need to learn to read and do math the same way. Whether you do it by pen and paper or by iPad, doesn’t make much of a difference.

    Here’s a study which highlights some of the comments I made in the first post: specifically, demographic diversity, sampling across countries, and the statistical significance in terms of differences.

    http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    It basically shows that when you adjust for sampling of students in terms of socio-economic makeup, the US does considerably better. It also shows that compared to other similar economies (Germany, France, UK), there’s really no difference. But US students in lower socio-economic classes outperform those in similar economies.

    • #10
  11. TKC1101 Member
    TKC1101
    @

    AIG:

    . Of course, some things just can’t be “scaled” or made easier through technology. Basic education is one of those fields. You still need to learn to read and do math the same way. Whether you do it by pen and paper or by iPad, doesn’t make much of a difference.

    I respectfully challenge your assertion. In the 1980s, there were computer based reading programs that with minimum coaching could get children to basic reading skills . net cost, I/50th of labor and six weeks instead of two years. Adopted? of course not. Did not fit the model of high labor and admin intensity.

    How much better would those efforts be with today’s immersive tech?

    I taught myself programming and a whole flock of very critical skills because I had to and no one told me I could not do it that way.

    The basic skills are the ones too critical to be left to education professionals. That would be like turning pain management over to the Inquisition.

    • #11
  12. Julia PA Inactive
    Julia PA
    @JulesPA

    AIG:
    http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    It basically shows that when you adjust for sampling of students in terms of socio-economic makeup, the US does considerably better. It also shows that compared to other similar economies (Germany, France, UK), there’s really no difference. But US students in lower socio-economic classes outperform those in similar economies.

    the Economic Policy Institute article is valuable reading, with many nuanced insights based on a deep analysis of the data:

    Both TIMSS and PISA eventually released not only the average national scores on their tests but also a rich international database from which analysts can disaggregate test scores by students’ social and economic characteristics, their school composition, and other informative criteria. Such analysis can lead to very different and more nuanced conclusions than those suggested from average national scores alone. For some reason, however, although TIMSS released its average national results in December, it scheduled release of the international database for five weeks later. This puzzling strategy ensured that policymakers and commentators would draw quick and perhaps misleading interpretations from the results. This is especially the case because analysis of the international database takes time, and headlines from the initial release are likely to be sealed in conventional wisdom by the time scholars have had the opportunity to complete a careful study.

    Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.

    The performance of the lowest social class U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance of such students in both top-scoring and similar post-industrial countries has been falling.

    Great policy attention in recent years has been focused on the high average performance of adolescents in Finland. This attention may be justified, because both math and reading scores in Finland are higher for every social class group than in the United States. However, Finland’s scores have been falling for the most disadvantaged students while U.S. scores have been improving for similar social class students. This should lead to greater caution in applying presumed lessons from Finland.

    We are only certain of this: To make judgments only on the basis of statistically significant differences in national average scores, on only one test, at only one point in time, without regard to social class context or curricular or population sampling methodologies, is the worst possible choice. But, unfortunately, this is how most policymakers and analysts approach the field.

    • #12
  13. Julia PA Inactive
    Julia PA
    @JulesPA

    Here is a chart that represents EPI’s analysis of distribution of social class among test takes:

    http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    EPI 2009 Social Class Group analysis

    • #13
  14. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @KermitHoffpauir

    Sheesh, all that one has to do to see the effectiveness of school choice is look at Orleans Parish (New Orleans) before and after Katrina.  That storm forced the state to go to the voucher system when public schools could not return to full service nearly as soon as parochial/private systems.

    http://thehayride.com/2011/08/school-choice-works-and-theyre-proving-it-in-new-orleans/

    My wife taught English at a local community college there in the mid-90’s.  Her students had at best a 4th grade reading comprehension.  After being forced to give passing grades of at least a “B” due need for student census and their PELL Grant tuition, she resigned.  Interesting that even a valedictorian of a local high school couldn’t pass the state exit exam to receive a diploma pre-Katrina.

    It really is a shame that New Orleans had sunk so low, what with the first university to offer a 4 year degree to women (Newcomb College of Tulane), which was also had the first women’s sports team of all colleges in the U.S., were Jews were openly accepted to college long before Ivy League institutions, and the list goes on.

    • #14
  15. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    AIG: 2) The US college system is…absolutely…the top performer in the world.

    That’s an article of faith, not a statement of fact.

    US schools produce no information that would allow one to make that claim based on statistical evidence.

    • #15
  16. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    AIG: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    It basically shows that when you adjust for sampling of students in terms of socio-economic makeup, the US does considerably better. It also shows that compared to other similar economies (Germany, France, UK), there’s really no difference. But US students in lower socio-economic classes outperform those in similar economies.

    It says our poor kids to better, but we have a lot more of them, so they bring the average down compared to our peers.

    Then they make this point, which contradicts your statement above:

    “At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a group of top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea). Although controlling for social class distribution would narrow the difference in average scores between these countries and the United States, it would not eliminate it”

    Do we want to compete with the best, or the second-best?

    They also point out that our poor kids are improving faster than poor kids in other countries, which suggests that No Child Left Behind is actually having some salutary effects.

    But at the end of the day, it seems to indicate that we’re “polishing pebbles, and dimming diamonds”:

    “Performance levels and trends in Germany are an exception to the trends just described. Average math scores in Germany would still be higher than average U.S. math scores, even after standardizing for a similar social class distribution. Although the performance of disadvantaged students in the two countries is about the same, lower-middle-class students in Germany perform substantially better than comparable social class U.S. students. Over time, scores of German adolescents from all social class groups have been improving, and at a faster rate than U.S. improvement, even for social class groups and subjects where U.S. performance has also been improving.”

    • #16
  17. Julia PA Inactive
    Julia PA
    @JulesPA

    Tuck:

    AIG: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    Do we want to compete with the best, or the second-best?

    They also point out that our poor kids are improving faster than poor kids in other countries, which suggests that No Child Left Behind is actually having some salutary effects.

    I think the point is the commentary on data, especially when AVERAGES are used, can be skewed.

    In the US, all children are taught, regardless of their social status–an in-depth analysis of the data indicates that. The averages publicly pushed as benchmarks of “US Failure” are skewed because the populations compared are not the same.

    consider chart in comment #13

    http://ricochet.com/u-s-millennials-fall-far-behind-educational-average/comment-page-1/#comment-2776739

    • #17
  18. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    Jules PA: I think the point is the commentary on data, especially when AVERAGES are used, can be skewed. In the US, all children are taught, regardless of their social status–an in-depth analysis of the data indicates that. The averages publicly pushed as benchmarks of “US Failure” are skewed because the populations compared are not the same.

    consider chart in comment #13

    Which simply shows what I said:

    “It says our poor kids to better, but we have a lot more of them, so they bring the average down compared to our peers.”

    I’m also pretty sure that “all children are taught, regardless of their social status” in all the countries they’re comparing us to.

    • #18
  19. Julia PA Inactive
    Julia PA
    @JulesPA

    Tuck:

    AIG: http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    But at the end of the day, it seems to indicate that we’re “polishing pebbles, and dimming diamonds”:

    “Performance levels and trends in Germany are an exception to the trends just described. Average math scores in Germany would still be higher than average U.S. math scores, even after standardizing for a similar social class distribution. Although the performance of disadvantaged students in the two countries is about the same, lower-middle-class students in Germany perform substantially better than comparable social class U.S. students. Over time, scores of German adolescents from all social class groups have been improving, and at a faster rate than U.S. improvement, even for social class groups and subjects where U.S. performance has also been improving.”

    Do German schools teach their immigrant populations, en masse? Do Finnish schools? Do Canadian schools?

    We are in a sorry state here in the US because of the unwillingness to manage our borders. It is an expensive prospect to teach all children age 5-18 with feet on US soil, regardless of their immigration status, languages spoken, etc.

    The diverse variables of a society influence test results.

    I’m not making a judgement here, just pointing out that the US population samples for these tests are much more diverse than for those of the countries to which we are supposedly ‘losing.’

    The averages of published test data do not compare apples to apples, but apples to oranges.

    • #19
  20. Tuck Inactive
    Tuck
    @Tuck

    Jules PA:

    Do German schools teach their immigrant populations, en masse? Do Finnish schools? Do Canadian schools?

    I’m curious to hear—What do you think they do with them?

    “A third of all children born in Germany belong to immigrant families”

    Immigration: Survey Shows Alarming Lack of Integration in Germany

    • #20
  21. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    TKC1101:

    I respectfully challenge your assertion. In the 1980s, there were computer based reading programs that with minimum coaching could get children to basic reading skills . net cost, I/50th of labor and six weeks instead of two years. Adopted? of course not. Did not fit the model of high labor and admin intensity.

    How much better would those efforts be with today’s immersive tech?

    I taught myself programming and a whole flock of very critical skills because I had to and no one told me I could not do it that way.

    The basic skills are the ones too critical to be left to education professionals. That would be like turning pain management over to the Inquisition.

    There’s tons of computers, iPads, fancy calculators etc etc in classrooms today. If what you were claiming were the case, it either has happened, and gone unobserved, or it hasn’t happened.

    Either way, if the argument is “more technology”, then there’s no argument to be had: schools today are chocked full of technology. The average HS in the US has more technology at the student’s fingertips than most universities around the world.

    But, ultimately, technology or the ability to utilize it to do much faster or complicated problems…aren’t going to help you in a standardized test.

    In HS we had graphing calculators to help us in AP Calculus. We could do anything on those calculators.

    But ask us to do those same problems by hand…in a test…and we’re screwed. I can’t even divide double digit numbers anymore by hand :) I need to pull out my phone to do it.

    So what technology allows us to do is do far far more complex problems, far faster. But it doesn’t provide us with a better understanding of what’s going on in the calculation. In fact, you forget that stuff because that’s no longer relevant to you.

    • #21
  22. user_1008534 Member
    user_1008534
    @Ekosj

    Hi AIG. Strangely, you often declare ‘nothing to be seen here’ in any data that might reflect poorly on the current administration. In particular, that because the US is more diverse of course our averages are lower. But the study you point us to itself makes clear:

    “At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a group of top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea). Although controlling for social class distribution would narrow the difference in average scores between these countries and the United States, it would not eliminate it.”

    For the money we spend, there is NO REASON that the US should be among the top scorers. They are doing something right. We are doing something wrong.

    • #22
  23. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Jules PA:Here is a chart that represents EPI’s analysis of distribution of social class among test takes:

    http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

    EPI 2009 Social Class Group analysis

    Yeah, that’s it!

    The US is over-represented in the lowest socio-economic groups, hence, of course the average scores will be lower.

    • #23
  24. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Ekosj:Hi AIG.Strangely, you often declare ‘nothing to be seen here’ in any data that might reflect poorly on the current administration. In particular, that because the US is more diverse of course our averages are lower.But the study you point us to itself makes clear:

    “At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a group of top-scoring countries (Canada, Finland, and Korea). Although controlling for social class distribution would narrow the difference in average scores between these countries and the United States, it would not eliminate it.”

    For the money we spend, there is NO REASON that the US should be among the top scorers. They are doing something right.We are doing something wrong.

    1) Unlike many here, I am not trying to score cheap political points. So of course you’re going to frame it as “the current administration”.

    2) I generally say that there’s “nothing to see here” in most cases…because in most cases…the data is far more complex than is shown, and is usually misrepresented. That was the case in 2007, and the case in 2015.

    I’m an equal opportunity…optimist :)

    You’re a selective opportunity pessimist :)

    3) The paragraph you’re quoting doesn’t mean anything. It’s comparing the US to the…top…3 countries. Ok. The US isn’t the top…but it’s not “under-performing” either.

    4) What you failed to quote is that the US does not do…statistically different…from other similar countries.

    5) Being in the top 6 or 10 in the world, only behind some city-states and some tiny homogeneous populations of Finns and Swiss…is actually evidence of very high performance.

    6) As I said…demographics matter here. The US is a nation of 330 million people.

    If you broke up the US by states, very many US states would be the top performers in the world. Massachusetts alone would be #1 or close to it, in the world.

    So why compare Finland, a nation of 5 million people, comprised mainly of Finns…with the US, a nation of 330 million people? Why not compare it with…Minnesota, a state with similar population and similar demographics to Finland?

    • #24
  25. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Tuck:

    That’s an article of faith, not a statement of fact.

    US schools produce no information that would allow one to make that claim based on statistical evidence.

    Of the top 100 universities in the world, more than half are US universities.

    It says our poor kids to better, but we have a lot more of them, so they bring the average down compared to our peers.

    Then they make this point, which contradicts your statement above:

    It doesn’t contradict it in any way. I didn’t claim we were the best. Saying that we’re not the best, isn’t a contradiction to my claim.

    It’s a contradiction to the claim that US schools are “failing”. Because it shows that we are certainly in the top of the world, and in similar positions as other similar economies and societies as the US.

    Do we want to compete with the best, or the second-best?

    This is the equivalent of saying “Hey, the US doesn’t have the highest GDP per capita in the world!”. Dubai has a higher one!

    Yeah, so what? You have to understand what this means. A nation of 5 million, like Finland, is hardly comparable to the US with 330 million people.

    Now compare Finland with…Minnesota…and see how it stacks up ;)

    Tuck:

    I’m curious to hear—What do you think they do with them?

    “A third of all children born in Germany belong to immigrant families”

    Immigrant families from where? Poland, Turkey, ex-Yugoslavia? Is that the same as…Nicaragua and El Savador?

    • #25
  26. user_1029039 Inactive
    user_1029039
    @JasonRudert

    I’m with AIG on this one. There is really only one country we should be comparing ourselves with, and that’s Mexico. Because Mexico is the motherland of Mexico’s students and America’s students. And as long as we’re educating Mexicans to a higher standard than they do, that’s about all you can ask for. These test scores are a consequence of other policy decisons, unrelated to pedagogy.

    Another policy decision that does shape our numbers is universal high school. Remember that when you say you are going to give a high school education to everyone, “everyone” includes _everyone_. About 19% of US high school graduates can’t read. That really isn’t a breakdown in the educational system, it’s a consequence of insisting that everyone go to high school. My graduating class included quite a few kids who were mentally disabled –“retards”–but they got exactly the same diploma I did. Quite a few were also foreign-born, and there was no way they were going to be taught to read fast enough to catch up. So that’s what high scool is for. (Among other things). It lets retards and foreigners walk across that stage with a cap and gown and make mom and dad proud. I’m not going to pee on their campfire. If you really wanted to improve our scores, you would have to keep all of these people out.

    • #26
  27. user_1029039 Inactive
    user_1029039
    @JasonRudert

    “Ekosj
    Hi AIG. Strangely, you often declare ‘nothing to be seen here’ in any data that might reflect poorly on the current administration.”

    This seems to be a common theme around here when it comes to AIG. And I find it very strange. Because when Bush was President, we were told by the other side that the President makes the weather. Literally (literally) Hurricane Katrina happened because Bush didn’t sign up for the Kyoto Protocols. And I thought “jeeezus what a bunch of hopeless idiots.”

    But now here I am at Ricochet and every time AIG points out the obvious, i.e., that Obama doesn’t make the weather, he’s accused of being a shill for this administration. I don’t get it.

    Obama is not making America’s kids dumber. We’ve been hearing for decades about how we’re falling behind these other countries. If it were true, we should see Europeans shooting laser beams out of their eyes and the Japanese communicating with telepathy while we move our cars around by sticking our feet through a hole in the floor. But we’re not.

    • #27
  28. user_1008534 Member
    user_1008534
    @Ekosj

    AIG … You are just too much. This series of posts are particularly strange. Tou have several paragraphs trashing “conservatives” but insist you are not out to score political points. You insist there is nothing to be seen in the data cited in the original post. Paraphrasing… The US averages are low because we are more diverse. To back up your assertion you point us to a study. OK.

    The actual results of the study YOU recommended …. “At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a group of top-scoring countries “. The US averages are low BECAUSE THE US SCORES ARE LOW IN EVERY SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS.

    Yet when confronted with these results of the study YOU recommended you declare they don’t mean anything!!!

    As I said. You are too much.

    • #28
  29. AIG Inactive
    AIG
    @AIG

    Jason Rudert:But now here I am at Ricochet and every time AIG points out the obvious, i.e., that Obama doesn’t make the weather, he’s accused of being a shill for this administration. I don’t get it.

    :) What’s not to get?

    All hyper-political individuals, whether they are on the Left or on the right operate in the same way:

    When your guy/gal is in office: everything is going great.

    When the other guy/gal is in office: everything is going terrible.

    Doesn’t matter if it’s the same thing.

    Ekosj:AIG … You are just too much. This series of posts are particularly strange.Tou have several paragraphs trashing “conservatives” but insist you are not out to score political points.You insist there is nothing to be seen in the data cited in the original post.Paraphrasing…The US averages are low because we are more diverse. To back up your assertion you point us to a study.OK.

    The actual results of the study YOU recommended …. “At all points in the social class distribution, U.S. students perform worse, and in many cases substantially worse, than students in a group of top-scoring countries “.The US averages are low BECAUSE THE US SCORES ARE LOW IN EVERY SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS.

    Yet when confronted with these results of the study YOU recommended you declare they don’t mean anything!!!

    As I said. You are too much.

    Read more carefully what you said. I highlighted it for you.

    Now read again what I said, and compare to what you are quoting in the highlighted section.

    See the difference?

    I.e., this isn’t an argument about whether the US is #1 in the world or not. It isn’t. But it’s also not under-performing. In fact, it’s performing quite well.

    • #29
  30. user_1008534 Member
    user_1008534
    @Ekosj

    AIG … actually you should read carefully what I said (because the conversation is not just about you)

    For the money we spend, there is NO REASON we should’t be among the top scorers.   And because are not (and used to be) we are failing and falling behind.   Maybe you are OK with the US being “not statistically different than” average.    I’m not….especially given the money we spend.     Others do it better.     And we should learn something.

    • #30
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